Regenerate the Borough? Yes We Cannes!
Council representatives attend international property conference in the South of France
Council tax payers will be at the receiving end of a whopping expenses bill after representatives from Hammersmith and Fulham Council attended a three-day trip to the South of France to attend a property conference.
At £1,500 a head just to get in to MIPIM – an annual conference of property developers staged in the same location as the renowned Cannes Film Festival – the council representatives will have already clocked up a big bill before they even touched down. Hotel, restaurant and entertainment costs will add to the bill that council tax payers will pick up.
MIPIM is held annually in Cannes and, their website promises seminars on ‘Russian Real Estate Markets’ and ‘New Horizons for the Gulf’.
Hammersmith and Fulham Council say they attended the event under the umbrella of the West London Partnership, which includes Ealing, Brent, Harrow and Hounslow councils. They say the purpose of the visit was to try and attract "multi-million pound inward investment to H&F in the face of tough competition from other areas of London, and other UK and European cities".
"H&F is determined to create new opportunities for our residents, through access to better schools, access to better jobs and by giving them a step up on to the housing ladder. The Council's presence at MIPIM is a reflection of how serious we are about that. Spending £12,000 marketing H&F on an international stage - £8,000 of which is our contribution to the West London stand, is a small price to pay considering the multi-million of investment the Council is aiming to secure for residents," a spokesperson said.
H&F Cabinet Member for Strategy, Cllr Mark Loveday added: "If you are a serious player in the regeneration field you need to be at MIPIM. The major players in the development industry, all the main city councils in the UK and Europe and their finance and professional advisers are here. Frankly, an amateur approach to these things simply doesn't work. You can't just sit back and hope that people will invest in West London - you have to go out and find them."
MIPIM is Europe's leading property conference, attended by 25,000 developers, investors and government representatives. The west London delegation was also joined by a delegation representing London and led by Mayor Boris Johnson who urged foreign businesses to relocate to the capital.
However, H&F opposition leader Stephen Cowan expressed concern about what the outcome of the conference might mean for local residents: "The Administration wrote to me to say that they had gone to the luxury French resort to meet property speculators so they could try to "unlock contentious developments sites" in our borough. The sites are only contentious with local residents because they're either set to be over-developed with buildings too big for the neighbourhoods the sites are in - as is the case with the current Goldhawk Industrial Estate plans. Or, the plans involve knocking down peoples' homes in areas such as the Queen Caroline Estate and West Kensington. I'm absolutely sure that residents don't want any contentious development sites unlocked and will object the vast sums of their hard earned council tax being spent by Councillors and officials while in the South of France," he said.
The event in Cannes involves not just meetings but also parties, including an opening Cocktail Party at the famous Carlton Hotel where delegates are told to “expect glamour and professional networking opportunities galore”.
Billed as the world’s premier real estate summit, MIPIM 'draws upon its unique international coverage and reputation to bring together the most influential decision-makers in the market, offering them access to the largest available showcase of development projects'.
March 17, 2009
